Homily Two for the Reception of the Lord (St. John of Kronstadt)

 

Homily Two for the Reception of the Lord 

By St. John of Kronstadt

“Now let Your servant depart in peace, O Master, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation” (Luke 2:29–30).

With these words the holy elder Symeon cried out at the departure of his life, when he took into his arms the forty-day-old Infant, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom, according to the custom of the Law — still preserved among us — the Most Holy Virgin Mary brought into the Temple. With joy he held in his arms Him who holds all creation; with joy the elder Symeon looked upon his approaching end, because in his own arms he saw Him who assured him of safety and of a blessed life even after death.

But we do not envy you, righteous elder! We ourselves possess your happiness — to receive the divine Jesus not only into our arms, but with our lips and hearts, just as you always bore Him in your heart even before seeing Him, while awaiting Him — and not once in a lifetime, nor ten times, but as often as we wish. Who among you, beloved brethren, does not understand that I am speaking of communion in the life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ? Yes, we possess a greater happiness than Saint Symeon; and the righteous elder, one may say, enclosed the Life-giving Jesus in his embrace as a foreshadowing of how believers in Christ in the times to come, on all days until the end of the age, would take Him up and bear Him — not only in their arms, but in their very hearts. Not only in their arms, I say, because the clergy who celebrate the Divine Liturgy also lift Him up in their hands at every liturgy, and afterward — O immeasurable mercy — enclose Him in the embrace of their hearts! O Jesus, Son of God, abyss of goodness and generosity! How do You not consume us, impure in heart and lips, always unworthy of Your most pure and life-giving Mysteries? And yet — what am I saying? You do indeed consume our unworthiness when we do not bring to You, who sit upon the throne, firm and unshakable faith and contrition of heart; but at the same time You immediately give life, grant rest, and gladden us when we are healed of the sickness of doubt and little faith, for You are the Truth and will not allow even the slightest shadow of doubt to remain in us unpunished.

Thus, we lift up the Lord, like Symeon, in our hands at every liturgy; while you — at least the greater part of you — are deemed worthy of the happiness of lifting up your Savior only once or a few times a year, and even then, is it always after proper preparation? May God grant that all approach so awesome a Mystery with due preparation. One must marvel at the unbelief and coldness of Christians toward Christ, their Life-giver and Lord! The fountain of immortality flows daily: come, prepared, and drink — especially since many are sick both in soul and body, and many have ample free time, some even spending it in idleness. And what do we see? Although we all feel in our souls the burden of sins and passions, our guilt, our wretchedness before God, our powerlessness in the struggle with passions — yet we do not come to the Lord, who offers Himself daily as food to the faithful and stands ready to grant every help to the needy and burdened. We see, and not always even that, almost only infants without understanding drinking from the immortal Fountain; and even them — alas! — it is sometimes not fathers, nor mothers, nor nurses, nor grandmothers who bring them to the Holy Mysteries, but women taken, as it were, from the street, sometimes beggars. What negligence toward the greatest holiness! Lord, Life-giving Savior! To what have we come? You daily come out to meet us at the gates of Your Temple, and we respond to You with indifference and even the most senseless carelessness. How long do You endure our wrongs, our coldness, our insensibility, our pride? The Lord is long-suffering toward us, brethren, not wishing that any should perish forever, but that all should come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9), that they may turn sooner or later from their insensibility.

Thus, the greater part of Christians meet the Lord coldly in the Temple — in His Holy Mysteries; they rarely approach the Holy Mysteries to partake of their Lord. Yet at least, even in sickness or before death, like Symeon, would that all might desire with joy to lift up the Lord and behold His salvation. But no: many flee from Him even in sickness, and when they are offered immortal food and drink and, together with it, the all-healing medicine of the Body and Blood of the Life-giver, they put it off to a future time over which they have no sure control, since our life is in God’s hands; and many secretly think that communion is only for just before death. O Christ our God! Did You not say with Your most pure lips that You came into the world so that people might have life, and have it more abundantly, and not in order to destroy them? “The Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:56). “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). And in the Holy Mysteries do You not grant life to all who receive them with faith? Do You not often wondrously heal illnesses? Do You not always loose and cleanse us from sins? How long, then, shall we remain foolish, unbelieving, and blind?

And with what joy each of us could say before death, after worthily receiving Your Holy Mysteries: “Now let Your servant depart in peace, O Master, according to Your word," from this brief and vain age, f"or my eyes have seen Your salvation” — here in its beginnings, and I hope to see it perfected there, in eternity. Now, even if I "walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me" (Ps. 23:4). Receive my spirit in peace. But behold, brethren, the Reception of the Lord will come for all people — for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and pagans, that is, for the whole human race. If you have not learned here to meet Him meek and humble, how will you meet Him in inaccessible glory? Where then shall we be? Where shall I be with my present negligence and coldness toward the Lord? Will not the sons of the kingdom be cast out into the outer darkness, where there will be eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 13:42)? The Apostle says that this will be so. How shall we escape the future torments if we neglect so great a salvation, which, having first been spoken by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him (Heb. 2:3)?

Brethren! In order that we may meet the Lord with joy at His second and glorious coming, let us learn to meet Him here — each year on the feast of the Meeting, and on all feast days and Sundays, and especially in the Holy Mysteries; that is, let us approach the Holy Chalice with great faith and a contrite and humble heart. For those who have grown accustomed to meeting Him worthily here, in this present age, the meeting with Him at His second and glorious coming will not be fearful.

O God, who desire to come again to judge the world in righteousness, grant also that I may meet You upon the clouds as my Judge and my God, that I may endlessly glorify and hymn You, together with Your unoriginate Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.